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Speech to the Wildlife Society meeting
"What makes a good field biologist?"
Thank you for inviting me here today.
As a scientist myself, it's always a pleasure and it's always stimulating to be among fellow scientists, although many claim I jumped ship and joined the dark side of policy and politics. Many of the topics being discussed here in Port Townsend are ones that my agency has spent a great deal of time on in recent years - cougars, spotted owls and orcas to name just a few.
I must admit upfront that one of the best things about being here today is that I can return to the times when I would deliver a scientific paper. I have done that many times before in different forums, and I enjoyed publishing the results of my work in journals like Ecology, Trans American Fish Society, and Limnological Oceanography, Evolution, and Canadian Journal of Fish and Aquatic Sciences to name a few.
I feel I am well grounded as a research scientist, but I stand here now as a policy lead of a large science-based organization.
So, with a practiced hand in both science and politics, what I want to talk about is a subject we've all at least thought about and probably talked about on numerous occasions during our professional lives. I notice from the agenda that later today, several of you will touch on the same subject.
That is the role of the field biologist in today's society or, more precisely, from my agency perspective what makes a good field biologist.
Let me assure you up front that even though my remarks today have not been passed the rigors of scientific protocol, they have been vetted through the School of Hard Knocks. That School of Hard Knocks is working for a regulatory agency-one whose actions have the force of law and through setting regulations being accountable for our actions.
That's a different role with different responsibilities than the role other people that follow me will be coming from. Indeed, if you look closely at me, you'll see the fresh scars form this particular legislative session, where the actions of a few field biologists have prompted a fierce debate over the role of all field biologists.
I happen to believe the job of a field biologist working in a regulatory agency is one of the most difficult-and most rewarding-in our profession.
The field biologist is literally on the front line of resource management, required to wear many hats ranging from scientist and sociologist to politician and policeman.
When the field biologist does his or her job right, they seldom get the kudos they deserve, but when they don't do their job right, we all hear about it-boy, do we hear about it.
And the criticism typically morphs into an indictment against all biologists by policymakers and others who have tremendous power over our natural resource agencies.
On more than one occasion in my present position, legislators have approached me and asked, with a straight face and in an earnest tone: Why do you need so many biologists?
Think of it! Why do you need biologists?
That's like asking Alaska Airlines why they need pilots. Or the Attorney General's Office why they need attorneys or DOT why they need engineers. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is a biology-based agency-biologists are us!
Those of you who know me, who have heard me talk before, know that I firmly believe that in our line of business, it all starts with the science.
Good science is the foundation from which everything else we do emanates.
In my opinion, any natural resource agency that fails to operate by this maxim not only undermines its credibility but, in the long term, is destined to fail in its mission.
In my own Department, when I became director, I took steps to underscore the importance of the department's science by appointing chief scientists to oversee and give stronger direction to our three resource programs -wildlife, habitat and fisheries.
These three scientists have been responsible for not only for overseeing the scientific efforts within their own respective programs, but promoting and strengthening scientific dialogue among the programs. John Pierce has done a great job for Wildlife, as has Jim Scott for Fisheries and Tim Quinn for Habitat.
So, whether we're dealing with how best to manage our state's cougar population, or how to recover threatened or endangered species ranging from pygmy rabbits and pond turtles to naturally-spawning Chinook or steelhead, science must be the driver-it is our compass!
I don't think anyone here today, whatever their specialty, would disagree that good science is the first, most critical step in everything we do.
Without it, we have no standing in the legal or political arenas, not to mention with our own constituent groups or the larger court of public opinion.
No lawmaker, for example, is going to support some activity that costs money - and may require sacrifices on the part of his or her constituents just because it "sounds" like the right thing to do.
First, we have to prove it through sound science. Then we have a fighting chance.
But the work of a field biologist, in my opinion, only begins with solid science. It by no means ends there.
Land conservation, species protection and many of the other activities that field biologists are involved in also require an awareness and understanding of the law, community and media relations, sociology, economics and, yes, politics.
Most of us are trained in natural sciences, and we are trained to manage resources through application of best available science. That doesn't mean we can simply ignore the social and political sciences that provide the context for our work: without these components we will fail as resource managers.
The point I'm trying to make is that field biologists who work for a regulatory agency are there to manage under the public trust. The resource belongs to the public, not the resource agency or the biologist-and it is the job of an agency field biologist to balance the needs of the resource with the needs of the public.
I believe that to remain relevant in today's increasingly complex - and I would say divisive - world, field biologists have no option but to balance these needs, to perform in the social world.
This doesn't mean compromising the resource. Far from it!
What it means is recognizing the needs of others and learning how to influence them to make better natural resource decisions without offending or alienating them.
It is my belief that lasting solutions to complicated natural resource issues require collaborative processes, and it is the job of the field biologist to facilitate these processes and hopefully bring them to a meaningful conclusion.
It's a tall order - and one I would venture to say most of us didn't think much about as we pursued our formal education in the natural sciences: I certainly didn't when conducting my research involving radioisotopes. I believe this still to be the case in most natural science programs at the university level-the science is good, the people skills are not.
But if the biologist fails in this regard, fails to perform in the social world, he or she - and the agency that employs them - will become irrelevant and left out of future discussions.
I consider myself extremely fortunate. In the four plus years that I have been director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best field biologists anywhere.
If the best biologists have one trait in common, it is a willingness to sit down with constituents, as equals, and collaboratively address the issue at hand.
It is because of the talents of these field biologists that we have been able to move forward and make progress on a number of important resource fronts-to make a real difference to the resource.
I can think of many examples of where the work of these biologists, of their willingness to purse collaboration instead of confrontation, has translated into success.
All these agreements were built around three key ingredients - flexibility, compromise and adaptive management - you learn as you go because you don't know it all right now. These are the same ingredients that in my mind are the hallmarks of a good field biologist.
As I stand here and relate to you what, in my mind, makes a good field biologist, I certainly don't want to minimize the fact that all of us who work for a natural resource agency with regulatory authority often find ourselves working in a hostile or suspicious environment.
It will come as no surprise to any of you, I'm sure, that there are those out there who are simply unwilling to work with us, who would rather resort to litigation or to roll us in the legislative arena or resort to some other means to get their way. Often at the expense of the resource.
Quite often, there is a larger political agenda at work, and it is the rare biologist who can buck this agenda by him- or herself.
For example, the field biologist working on threatened or endangered species recovery is unlikely to have a productive relationship with a constituent who is convinced that such recovery programs amount to nothing more than a land grab by government agents in black helicopters.
But sometimes I think field biologists are their own worst enemies and play into the hands of those who would subvert our work rather than work with us.
I believe field biologists can and do undermine their effectiveness and credibility by forgetting that they work for a public agency with regulatory authority - not an advocacy group or a university.
It belongs to everyone, and the public entrusts its management to you-the professionals. Lose that trust and you lose management authority.
In my own Department, I could recount a number of instances where field biologists have forgotten these things, where they have stepped outside the realm of what it means to be a good field biologist working for a state agency regulating a public resource.
In these instances, the actions of the biologists have had ramifications far beyond the immediate issue at hand.
Instead, their actions have typically had a ripple effect and caused a constituent or policymaker to question not just those biologists' actions, but also the Department's actions as a whole - and whether the Department has the ability to responsibly carry out its mandate in the public interest.
I don't have to go back any further than the current Legislative session to illustrate my point.
As many of you know, the Department of Fish and Wildlife is charged under state law to enforce the state hydraulics code - the only law in Washington designed specifically to protect fish while allowing construction activities that may affect the bed or flow of a water body.
Yet that 60-year-old law came precariously close to being undermined this legislative session because several biologists chose to confront their constituents rather than collaborate with them when differences arose over how to implement the code.
In one example - one that prompted a state legislator to get into the act on behalf of his constituent-, a biologist became involved in a dispute with a citizen and eventually over-extended his authority and improperly shut down the citizen's business operation.
Things deteriorated so badly that the citizen had a court issue a retraining order prohibiting the biologist from coming near him.
Actions such as these threaten to take the entire ship down with them. And they prompt some legislators and others to ultimately ask the question that I mentioned earlier:
Why does your agency need biologists?
One of my favorite quotes is from the late, great conservationist Aldo Leopold who once said - and I am paraphrasing: Resource management is relatively easy. It's human management that's difficult.
The essence of resource management, the essence of the field biologists' job, is to manage people's expectations, to ensure the public's trust.
The issues we deal with are difficult, they impact people's lives in big ways-land use, water use, property rights, public safety….the list goes on and on.
I suspect the pressures on field biologists will continue to mount in coming years. The state's explosive population growth during the past three decades has put tremendous pressures on the need to balance fish and wildlife needs with those of people.
And the recession we presently find ourselves in will surely add to these pressures as some people seek to relax fish and wildlife protections in the name of economic progress.
As we work to balance the needs of fish and wildlife with those of farmers and developers and hydroelectric operators and others, we will have to remember that we are the ones required to wear many hats.
We have to remember that a collaborative approach to solving complex and controversial resource issues is not elective, it's imperative. This can be called "collaborative conservation"-whatever term is coined it increasingly recognizes the importance of the "human dimension" in natural resource management.
I am convinced the greatest satisfaction in our profession will go to those willing to embrace a collaborative approach to put our science to work on the ground where it counts.
Why, because the ultimate test for being successful as a biologist is not solely the development of the best science; the litmus test is about what science is actually implemented on the ground, in the field. Implementation makes the real difference to the resource and that's where our efforts need to be.
Thank you.
Port Townsend, Washington - April 16, 2003
Remarks by Dr. Jeffrey Koenings, WDFW Director
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